/Pokemon

This year at WisCon I participated on the Netbook Show and Tell panel as the plug-and-play representative. For those who know their programming, it was an informative panel. For those who are a little more, uh, Luddite, it was a hilarious panel; I’m pretty sure that at some point in the melee, someone recalibrated their warp drive for endothermic propulsion.

People were very generous about showing off their netbooks and going through the pros and cons. I’ve done a layperson’s roundup over at Tor.com..

Hopefully this is just the beginning of my WisCon recapping, but I went back to the day job this morning after letting work build up in my absence, and oh, that’s always fun! (More later, is what I’m saying. Because this place is wild today.)

Over at Tor.com, I talk about one of the great movies of our time: Hackers.

By all means, head over there to read the column, in which I tried to keep it together. Because below this cut, I just nerd out ridiculously.

Hackers: when cargo pants were king.

There is no good and bad. There is only fun and boring.
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Disclaimer: I don’t care about Valentine’s Day except that it gives me a chance to make a list post. I am the Switzerland of Valentine’s day. (Unless people ask me if I’m excited for my “name day,” and then I sigh, because seriously, that joke was old in fourth grade, it’s old now.)

- Michael Fassbender. You inexplicably turn me all caps, big guy. Can’t wait to see you in your disastrous Wuthering Heights next year.

- Star Fleet wallets. I am the bird! (God, did I ever leave the house as an adolescent? Don’t answer that.)

- Family and friends. Dear Mom, I love you so much. Sorry I’m not changing my name. Apologize to Grandma for me.

- Fassbender, my portable computer. It allows me to be rude in public whenever I want.

- My TV. It took away the dialogue track for this week’s Eleventh Hour. It was amazing. Graeme Revell, one of my favorite composers, gave me a little concert, and I got to see the worst arch-enemy arc in recent memory. See for yourself at Tor.com!

ETA: And I never have to watch another episode of Dollhouse now that I turned in my opinion piece to Fantasy, which makes this day practically Thanksgiving!

I blogged at Tor.com about the Antikythera mechanism, recently replicated by a museum curator and part-time awesome-ist. It reminds me a lot of my first laptop, only this two thousand year old computer works faster than my first laptop, which was only good for predicting orbit as far as I could throw it.

I am leaving on vacation this weekend, and will be at home all week, working on the book edits and the 2k-a-day writing schedule I have to be on for the rest of the year to meet my goals. I was planning to bring the large laptop, but my dad called me last night to make sure I was bringing Fassbender, my Acer Aspire One, home for the holidays. He was as excited about the computer as he was about my visit. (Possibly more excited about the computer than my visit. I mean, I’ve already visited him before; the computer is new!)

I’m debating – I love it for short bursts, but am I going to get Carpal Tunnel banging out 2k a day on its teeny keyboard? On the other other hand, when friends at home ask, “What are you doing these days?” I can just hold it up, since I spend most of my waking hours in front of a computer for something or other, and it’s cute enough to distract them from my boring night life!